KBCW
KBCW, virtual channel 44 (UHF digital channel 45), is a television station licensed to San Francisco, California, United States, serving the San Francisco Bay Area as the West Coast flagship of The CW Television Network. The station is owned by the CBS Television Stations subsidiary of CBS Corporation, as part of a duopoly with CBS owned-and-operated station KPIX-TV (channel 5), also licensed to San Francisco. The two stations share studios on Battery Street, just north of San Francisco's Financial District; KBCW's transmitter is located atop Sutro Tower. The station is available on channel 12 on most cable providers in the Bay Area and has equally promoted this channel placement in its branding for decades. History As an independent station The station first signed on the air on January 2, 1968, as KBHK-TV (standing for Kaiser Broadcasting/Henry Kaiser); it was originally owned by Kaiser Broadcasting (established by steel/aluminum and shipbuilding industrialist Henry J. Kaiser 1882-1967) and which owned other UHF independent stations in Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Cleveland. KBHK-TV was the third independent station in the San Francisco Bay area behind San Jose-based KGSC-TV (channel 36, now KICU-TV) and Oakland-based KTVU (channel 2), and the first independent licensed to San Francisco. The station was originally based in studios located at 650 California Street. Several key scenes from the Robert Redford-starring political election intrigue movie The Candidate (1970) were filmed in KBHK's studio at 420 Taylor Street (originally NBC "Red Network" Radio Studios). Many of KBHK's technicians appeared in the movie as themselves. Kaiser Broadcasting later merged with Chicago-based Field Communications (Marshall Field, (1834–1906, founder of empire including famous department store chain and later descendents branching into media with broadcasting flagship TV station WFLD among others, and daily newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times and defunct tabloid Chicago Daily News) in 1973 as part of a joint venture between the companies. In 1977, Kaiser sold its interest in the stations to Field, making Field the sole owner of KBHK. Field later put its stations up for sale in 1982, and KBHK was sold to United Television in 1983. KBHK maintained a general entertainment program schedule that included morning and afternoon children's blocks, off-network sitcoms (such as The Brady Bunch), feature films, and public affairs programming. At one point, KBHK advertised itself as the "Bay Area's Movie Station" and aired a movie in prime time six nights a week. At various times during the 1970s and 1980s, KBHK was the flagship TV affiliate of the Oakland Athletics, pre-empting regular programming to telecast the baseball games. Several local programs produced at KBHK were syndicated nationally including Leonard Nimoy's Star Trek Memories (distributed by Paramount Television) and The Twilight Zone Special (distributed by Viacom). In 1993, the station began carrying programs from the Prime Time Entertainment Network programming service (which was owned jointly by Chris-Craft/United Television and Warner Bros. Entertainment) which it carried until January 1995. As a UPN affiliate In 1994, Chris-Craft/United Television partnered with Paramount Television to launch the United Paramount Network (UPN). As a result of Chris-Craft/United's interest in the network, UPN signed affiliation deals with both the company's independent stations (along with those owned by the Paramount Stations Group) to become charter owned-and-operated stations of the network. KBHK joined UPN when it launched on January 16, 1995. The station continued with its programming format, essentially continuing to program similarly to an independent as UPN would not expand to five nights a week of programming until 1998. The older sitcoms and cartoons (such as The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest and Sailor Moon) were gradually replaced during the late 1990s and early 2000s with more recent sitcoms, talk shows, game shows, court shows and reality shows. In 2000, Viacom bought Chris-Craft's 50% ownership interest in UPN (which Chris-Craft had wholly owned, until Viacom acquired a stake in the network in 1996), stripping KBHK's status as an O&O. On August 12 of that year, Chris-Craft sold its UPN stations to the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of News Corporation for $5.5 billion; the deal that was finalized on July 31, 2001. Fox subsequently traded KBHK-TV to Viacom in exchange for KTXH in Houston and WDCA in Washington, D.C., thus returning KBHK's status as an O&O. Viacom had purchased CBS a year earlier, resulting in the creation of a duopoly between KBHK and CBS O&O KPIX. Since News Corporation also owned the Fox network at the time (the company split in two in 2013; the company that now owns the network is 21st Century Fox); the trade protected the former Cox-owned KTVU as the Bay Area's Fox affiliate (Fox would later purchase KTVU and sister station KICU in exchange for their Boston station WFXT and Memphis station WHBQ-TV in October 2014). The Viacom purchase also reunited KBHK with Detroit's WKBD, which had been purchased by Paramount Stations Group (which was in the process of being sold to Viacom, through that company's acquisition of Paramount) in 1993. After its purchase by Viacom was finalized, KBHK moved from its original longtime studios on California Street in the Nob Hill area and integrated its operations with KPIX at their studios on Battery Street. As a CW affiliate On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. On the day of the announcement, the network signed a ten-year affiliation deal with 11 of CBS Corporation's 15 UPN stations, including KBHK. However, it is likely that KBHK would have been chosen even without the affiliation deal. Network representatives were on record as preferring the "strongest" WB and UPN affiliates in terms of viewership, and KBHK had been well ahead of WB affiliate KBWB-TV (channel 20, now KOFY-TV) in the ratings for virtually all of UPN's run. KBCW holds the distinction of being The CW's West Coast flagship station, even though this position is normally assigned to a Los Angeles station; CBS Corporation does not own a CW station in that market—the company owns KCAL-TV, which it runs as an independent station, while L.A.'s CW affiliate KTLA (owned by Tribune Broadcasting) serves as its largest station in the West Coast (in terms of market size). With the launch of The CW, KBCW became the Bay Area's only major English-language network (and network-owned) station on the UHF dial. To reflect the new affiliation, KBHK officially changed its call letters to KBCW on July 1, 2006. In June 2013, the station changed its logo from the generic design used since The CW's launch to a version utilizing the station's call letters (also being utilized by The CW's Des Moines, Iowa affiliate KCWI). Category:The CW Affiliates Category:Channel 44 Category:1968 Category:Television channels and stations established in 1968 Category:San Francisco Category:California Category:CBS Corporation Category:UHF Category:Former independent stations Category:Former PTEN affiliates Category:Former UPN affiliates Category:The CW California Category:Former NTA Film Network affiliates Category:VHF Category:2006 Category:Comet Affiliates Category:MeTV Affiliates Category:TBD Affiliates